A Month in Review

It's amazing how one month can completely change your life and also go by so quickly.

Today marks one month since we have become parents. Our little girl, S. is upstairs sleeping, we couldn't be happier. She surprises us everyday with how much she is learning and changing.

We had a lot of obstacles while we waited for her referral and it wasn't easy, but I couldn't think of a better time for us to be her parents. As we are more prepared today then 2 years ago, or even a year ago.

Here are some fun things about our girl:

She loves her bath, as soon as we get into the bathroom and she sees the water she lights up and smiles big. She splashes and splashes.

She is about 90% on her way to crawling. She tries really hard and rocks back and forth and then get frustrated and sucks on her fingers, very sad. :)

She can eat! She has tried almost all the stage 1 food and is now onto the next group. We wanted to make sure she didn't have any allergies so we started off slow. So far she likes everything. Just yesterday she has started to groan while eating, I think she is saying ummm good!

When we blow her kisses she smacks her lips back at us. She doesn't do it all the time but is so cute when she does.

She has a LeapFrog Learning Table when it plays a song she smiles really big, every time. She loves that thing!

She can get really angry, and says nay nay nay, watch out that means your in trouble.

She pulls her shirt up to her face and uses it as a blankie. It's easy, convenient, most of the time you have one on, so why not!

Adoption Travel Tips

Here are some of my travel tips, hopefully they are helpful to someone out there. For a more general list search the web or visit families with children from Vietnam.

We flew Eva Airlines Evergreen Deluxe class and loved it! We where very comfortable and was worth the extra money. You can get Continental Airlines miles for your trip, even if you book it through a travel agent. I signed up for there frequent flier program online and got a number immediately. Now have enough miles from combining our miles to get one free trip anywhere in the U.S.

The hotels we stayed at didn't have dressers, so you might want to pack some hangers to help organize your stuff. The last thing you want to do is be searching your suitcase for a clean shirt and not have any!

At the Rex hotel the water was so hot you could burn yourself really easy. This makes cleaning the bottles really nice but not so great for your hands. Brings some tongs or buy some at the tax market across the street.

Some of the more tourist stores took U.S. dollar, this could save you on the exchange rate, we took 1500.00, and came home with 400.00. Buy things when you see them, we didn't have time to go back or do a lot of shopping, so I wish I had bought more when I saw it.

For us eat became extremely difficult as we where trying to deal with a new baby. I would suggest bring some power bars for when you cannot eat.

The baby wipes are not the greatest in Vietnam, I brought two 80 count wipes and ran out.

Bring lots of easy clothes, cotton pants, onesies, leave the cute stuff for home. Also don't worry about things being too big, it's easy to dress a baby in clothes that are a little big than try to get them into a outfit that fits just right.

Take lots of pictures, this is the one time when you want that camera with you at all times and take tons of pictures!

Coming HOME!

After a really hard time getting flights and multiple trips to the ticket agent, we got tickets and are in Taipei! We have a really long layover but we should be home in about 15 hours.

Our time went by so fast, we both with we had more time in HCMC. I'm so excited to bring home our little girl and be in our own house!

I promise I will post more about our trip and tips for those going soon! And yes, more pictures! :)

Hanoi

We finalized all our appointments and fly to Hanoi on Thursday. The flight wasn't bad, hopefully we can survive the flight home, wish us luck! S. has a huge set of lungs on her and can make some noise.

There was a problem with the hotel and us and another family had to stay at a near by hotel. The hotel was horrible, we almost didn't stay the first night and wouldn't have if we had any other options. But now we are at the hotel we are suppose to be and all is good.

We are ready to come home, we are on stand by for Tuesday so again wish us luck!

We are enjoy our time with the other families, we don't care for Hanoi as much as HCMC. Today we went to the water puppet show, it was excellent.

Our time in Vietnam

The internet connection is so slow, and each time I try to come down to post all the computers are full.

We love it here! There is so much to see. Although with a new baby we aren't going at as much as we want too. We will just have to come back.

Monday had her medical appt. We where warned it would be hot. When the coordinator tells you that, you have to worry. It was really hot! I think we where there for about two hours for all the families to get in. The room was so muggy as we waited S. got really fussy. I was a little concerned about her since the family before us said the guys wasn’t too nice.

It was our turn we went into the room with the doctor and two nurses. She has a way of turning on the charm. She was all smiles, looks at everyone in the eye and is just a charmer. By the time we left, he was smiling the nurse was smiling, we where proud parents!

Today we had our last appointment in HCMC with the US government. This was a very different appointment than yesterday, nice high rise building with very good air conditioning.

After our appointment we walked around the city for a few hours.

Tomorrow we are going on a tour of the Mekong Delta with some of the other families. We are well taken care of on this trip by our coordinators.

S’ paperwork might be ready for us to fly to Hanoi on Thursday. We are sad that our time is coming to an end in HCMC already and haven’t seen all we had planned too. We will defiantly come back someday.

Giving and Receiving Ceremony

We had our Giving and Receiving Ceremony yesterday. As of yesterday we are her parents in the eyes of the Vietnamese Government. We are thrilled!

Now we have a bunch of appointments to fulling to US Government part of the process.
We have the weekend free to explore around Vietnam. There are 6 other families here with us.

The Vietnamese love there children, S. gets lots of looks and attention when we go out. Last night we went to dinner and when they served us our food, they took S. while we eat. She loved all the attention from the women, we could see them carring her around and talking to her, very sweet. I'm sure we won't get that kind of service in the US at restaurants :)

Getting settled

We are getting settled more and more each day. We haven't gone exploring to much, since it's hot out and we are still getting use to what S. likes and doesn't like. She slept much better last night, still up quite a bit, but she only need two bottles. I'm hoping we can drop that down to only one :)

She is a very happy baby in the mornings and loves to take a bath. And she is a huge talker! Even when she is crying she is making babbling noises. We think she is teething so not a happy baby at moments.

Tomorrow is are G&R, wish us luck. Not much else to report, but here is a picture, sorry the connection is sloooww so I'm give you the best one!

We have her!

We are pleased to report, we have her! She is asleep with her daddy right now.

We arrived at the orphange and was taken to an offical room to wait. Then we saw her caretaker bringing her to us! She did so good, didn’t cry once. We visited with the directors at the orphange and saw her room, and meet the caretakers. It is amazing the amount of love they have for the children. During the ride back she slept the whole time, couldn't ask for anything better.

She was up about every 2 hours last night, so a little fussy and tired but hopefully today we can get settled a little more.

We made it!

We made it without any problems or worries. We are a little tired but are going to get our daughter in 1 hour! Let's hope the first night together goes off without too many problems.

It's so helpful to have read other families blogs, and get helpful tips. Like the tax market across the street, where you can find anything you need or forgot. We also proud to say we made it sucessfully across the busy street and didn't die! That was a little scary though :)

and we are off!

We leave tonight! Arriving Tuesday morning. We are so excited to finally be able to go meet our daughter and bring her home. What a awesome experience. We cannot wait. I'm hoping to post while I'm gone to journal our trip for years to come.

Today will be filled with last minute things! Gotta run! :)